


the pain of the past

by ThanksForListening



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, abuse tw, friendship...for now?, mentions of abuse, yeah we're exploring the hell out of one of those, you know those little mini flashbacks anne gets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 08:04:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThanksForListening/pseuds/ThanksForListening
Summary: "It was the smell this time.Usually it was sounds. Noises that brought memories from the depths of her mind up into the forefront, paralyzing her until the moment from time had passed. Despite their frequency, they always seemed to catch her by surprise, and afterwards she often spent hours trying to fully shake off their grasp. Still, she felt as if she knew how to handle them, knew how to bring herself back when a sound sent her reeling to houses she’d left behind.But smells, she’d discovered. Smells were much worse. "or, Anne has a flashback, and Gilbert helps her get through it.





	the pain of the past

**Author's Note:**

> takes place during season one, before Gilbert's dad passes away. Also i know nothing about the era so if there's historical inaccuracies lets just pretend they're not there. 
> 
> TW for past child abuse. not too graphic but please be safe

It was the smell this time. 

Usually it was sounds. Noises that brought memories from the depths of her mind up into the forefront, paralyzing her until the moment from time had passed. Despite their frequency, they always seemed to catch her by surprise, and afterwards she often spent hours trying to fully shake off their grasp. Still, she felt as if she knew how to handle them, knew how to bring herself back when a sound sent her reeling to houses she’d left behind. 

But smells, she’d discovered. Smells were much worse. 

She felt the world around her slip away. The storefronts, the horses, the shoppers and townsfolk rushing to escape the brisk winter air. All of it melted into nothing. The only thing that existed was the smell of burnt chocolate, surrounding her like a raging fire, taking time and air and Avonlea with it. 

Anne watched as the familiar walls of the Hammond house rose out of the ground around her. She felt herself turn back, shrink from her current thirteen years to just barely eleven. She could hear crying coming from somewhere behind her — she always heard crying when she went back to that house. The yelling always followed, with pain not far behind. 

They’d only had chocolate once. Mr. Hammond had been in a pleasant mood, a rare occurrence in itself, and had dropped the sweets on the kitchen table. “Bake these into something,” he’d told her. She’d tried to tell him that no one had taught her to bake before, that she only knew how to cook, but he’d acted as if her words had disappeared the minute they’d come out of her mouth, and had left whistling an unfamiliar tune. 

Staring at the dessert, she thought she might melt them. She’d read somewhere that those who had time and money often melted chocolate and dipped whatever they could find into it. She’d placed them in a pot, hung it over the fire, but one of the twins started crying, and when one cried the other always joined, and by the time she’d come back to the fire, the pot had turned black and smoke filled the room. The sweet smell had turned bitter, oppressive as it spread across every room of the too-small house.

Mr. Hammond’s mood soured quicker than the chocolate. She’d been thrown into the table, onto the ground, dragged outside before she’d even had the chance to take the pot off the heat. She’d lost count of how many times he whipped her that night. When he finished, he left her outside, locked the door before she could even drag herself off the tree stump. She spent the night there, staring at the stars, begging for sleep to take the pain away. It never did. 

A hand on her arm yanked her out of the yard and back into town. The sounds hit her all at once, and she closed her eyes, grimaced in pain. She instinctively reached to cover her ears, but an arm still held onto hers. She tried to turn, to open her eyes and see who it belonged to, but the memory’s grip relented, and she felt as if it was physically trying to pull her back, back into the cold and dark, into the pain of the past. 

She felt herself moving, the hand on her arm guiding her away from wherever she was. Eventually she felt a wall behind her back, felt another hand on her arm guiding her to the ground. 

It wasn’t until she was sitting down that she finally felt air flowing through her lungs, heart calming down just enough for her to open her eyes and see the boy standing in front of her.

“Gil,” She exhaled, not able to say more than the first syllable and not louder than a whisper. She saw his lips moving, but she couldn’t quite hear him yet. She closed her eyes again, let his words slip into focus. 

“—aren’t you saying anything? Anne? You’re scaring me, Anne.”

“Gil,” She said again, more to herself than to him. She used his name as an anchor, let it settle her back into the present, let it bring memories of Green Gables to the forefront of her mind, in place of the Hammond house. 

“Anne.” He sighed as he said her name, and sat down on the ground in front of her. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, suddenly remembering where she was. When she was. Most importantly, who she was with. 

“Are you sure? Because a second ago you were...gone.”

“Gone?”

“I called your name. Stood right in front of you, and you didn’t move. It was like you were looking through me. Like you were frozen, or asleep with your eyes open. You were here, but you weren’t here.”

“Oh.”

“What was that? What happened to you?”

“Nothing happened, Gilbert. I’m fine.”

“If you’re fine, then why are you still shaking?”

She looked down, held her hand in front of her body, and silently cursed at the way it trembled. She quickly put it back down, placed her other hand over it. Willed her body to relax. 

“I’m fine now,” she insisted, “so if you don’t mind, I’ll just be on my way.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“You think I’m letting you walk home? After that?”

“You think you can stop me?”

“Oh, I _know_ I can stop you.”

“I think you’ve gravely underestimated me, Gilbert Blythe,” She said, and she tried to stand up, to storm off and prove her point, but the minute she was upright the world seemed to spin, and only the wall behind her kept her on her feet. 

“Woah, easy,” he said, and she didn’t want to let him ease her back to the ground, but she didn’t have the strength to stop him. She closed her eyes again, let the world realign itself, before she looked back at him. 

“I didn’t ask for your help,” she told him, trying to put as much bite in the words as she could. 

“Well, you’re welcome,” he said, and she did her best to glare at him, but he just seemed amused instead of intimidated. 

“I’m serious,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m always fine. It goes away after a while.”

“What does?” He asked, and she didn’t know why, but there was something in his voice that made her want to answer. 

“The memories.” 

“Is that what happened?” He asked, choosing his words carefully. “You...remembered something? About before?”

“It’s more than that.” She searched for the words to describe it, realizing that she’d never spoken about the sensation aloud before, not this directly and certainly not to another person. “It’s as if I’m truly in the moment again. As if I’ve traveled back in time. Usually it’s sounds that take me there.”

“What was it this time?”

“The smell of burnt chocolate coming from the bakery.” 

“Does it always...make you like this?”

“It usually isn’t this bad,” she insisted. “I know how to deal with sounds. I can snap myself out of it much faster that way, listen and talk my way back into time. The smell was harder to break away from. I’m not sure why.”

“Where…” he started to say, swallowing before he continued. “Where did the smell take you?”

Logic told her to leave it well alone, to shut her mouth before he stared at her like everyone else did when she reminded them of where she came from, but a feeling deep in her stomach told her to continue. “The house I worked at,” she said, “before I came here. The Hammonds.”

“You worked?” He asked, and she nodded. “Doing what?”

“Doing everything.” He made a face, and she sighed. “You know — I cleaned, cooked, took care of the children, chopped wood, helped keep up the land. Normal stuff.”

“How old were you when you started working there?”

She thought for a moment. “Around ten? Maybe eleven? They don’t care much for our birthdays in the asylum, so I lost track a few times.”

“Were they nice? The Hammonds?” He asked, and the way he asked it made her believe he already knew the answer, but wished he was wrong.

She shook her head anyway. “No. They were not nice.”

He looked down, and she could see him thinking of the question, and she knew him too well to believe that he wouldn’t ask it. Even if it looked as if he didn’t want to. 

“What was the memory?” His voice was dark and either sad or angry, Anne couldn’t quite tell. “The one of burnt chocolate?”

She felt it again, that feeling in her stomach that seemed to push the words up onto the tip of her tongue. So she told him. 

He ran a hand through his hair when she was finished, and Anne wondered whether he’d always had that nervous habit, and how she hadn’t noticed it until now. 

“Did that happen a lot?” He asked, but he wouldn’t look at her, and the way he spoke made her think just saying the words caused him pain. “What they did to you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. 

“How could you stand it?” She didn’t quite know what to do with the question. No one had ever asked her that before. Most people, despite their incessant reminders of her origins, seemed to only want to discuss her past in vague references. She’d learned quickly that details pushed people away, made them think about horrors they wished to ignore. 

Yet, here was Gilbert, asking straight out, and she found she wasn’t afraid to tell him the truth. She felt quite certain that he wouldn’t run away. 

“I disappeared into my own imagination. Anne Shirley may have had to feel pain and sorrow, but I could always become someone else, if only for a little while. Princess Cordelia never suffered under the hands of a whip, or felt the stomach pains of starvation, or the sorrow of truly being alone in life. So, as long as I was her, neither did I.”

She looked at him, waited for...for what she wasn’t quite sure. Some sort of reaction, surely. Everybody seemed to have some sort of reaction to her. 

He stayed silent, and she tried to read the look on his face, but it was one she had only seen a few times, and she had yet to identify it. Regardless, she knew what was buried underneath whatever face he currently wore, what was in the eyes of everyone who stared at Anne the orphan.

“I don’t need your pity, Gilbert.” She told him, her words sharper than she intended.

“You don’t have it.”

“Then what’s that look on your face?”

He shrugged. “Awe. I’m in awe of you, Anne Shirley-Cuthburt.”

He stood up, then offered her his hand. She took it, a curious look on her face. Anne decided that she didn’t quite understand Gilbert Blythe, and she was fairly certain there was nobody else like him. 

They walked, and Anne realized they’d been in an alley, hidden away from the prying eyes of neighborhood gossips. He kept his hand in hers, probably to make sure she didn’t fall again, but even when she knew she wouldn’t, she didn’t let go. 

“Please don’t tell anyone at school about this,” she said softly as they rejoined the crowd. “I don’t need to give everyone another reminder that I’m what I am.”

“I won’t,” He said, and they’d stopped walking, waiting to part ways, but his hand still lingered in here. “Will you tell me? If it happens again? I mean, if it’s bad like this one?”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think you should have to go through that alone.” 

She didn’t say yes, but she also didn’t say no. Instead, she smiled at him. “Goodbye, Gilbert.”

“Goodbye, Anne.”

She turned to walk away, but paused. She stood frozen for an instant, before turning around. She was surprised to see he hadn’t moved, that his eyes were still on her. “And thank you!” She yelled, turning and running off before she could she the look on his face. Although, the more she thought of it, the more she was certain she didn’t need to — she knew well enough what kind of smile he’d worn when she turned her back.

**Author's Note:**

> literally finished AWAE yesterday and i already have two other fanfics in the works lol oops. hit me up with those kudos and comments or come find me on tumblr @thanks--for--listening.


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